nekare

Ha! I caught you again, my evil fic muse, you've nowhere to go now!! *cough* anyway, this was fun to write, as I'd been waiting to write something for this prompt for ages.

Title: Hide and Seek
Rating: PG
Word Count: 795
Summary: Remus is lost, and Sirius can't seem to find him even when he's sitting right next to him.
Author Notes: AU. Written for tellmeakiss' prompt: Wings. Much thanks go to dzturtlepower, who gave me the loveliest description ever for free so I could use it in here :)

“Your wings are so pretty, Sirius, have I ever told you that?”

“Yes, Remus. You have.”

Sirius still visits every day, still crouches by his side every single day with his heart caught in his throat as Remus smiles up at him with his arms around his legs, staring at him (pass him) with too dilated pupils and pieces of paper on his hair. Sirius brushes it away, softly, and as he gets close enough to feel Remus’ breath on his face he remembers all those might-have-been times of closeness, of almost touches that remained nothing out of sheer fear and stupidity (regret, he knows, and he feels like kicking himself).

But that makes him remember Peter throwing Remus down the stairs when he refused to give him James and Lily’s new address, it reminds him the long waiting hours outside the OR, the empty whiteness as Remus’ life stopped for a minute and three seconds only to come back with not enough oxygen in his brain.

It makes him remember a future, one plus one equals two, and he always tries to forget about it until he sees it in his dreams.

Would you take me to the clouds, so I could eat some?”

“Remus, please, just try to remember---” a fearful look, and Sirius has to look away. “Yes. I would. What shape would you like the most?”

The doctors say Remus might get better, that it’s just a matter of time, and Sirius has picnics with him on his small hospital bed, with a cliché checkered blanket that makes Remus smile and makes Sirius want to see the bloke that had turned his insides out hidden between the carcass of a past. He doesn’t, though, and he stays quiet when the Potter family come and visit in the evenings, Harry tugging lightly at his hair. Remus smiles at them, smiles too much and it looks awkward on a face that always looked far better with a smirk, a mischievous grin, a fierce determination (gone now, fallen from the top of the skyscraper of life, floor after floor of nothingness inside). James looks as destroyed as he is, Lily tells him so very softly he shouldn’t lose hope.

(He snorts a bit at that, and wants to scream at the top of his lungs he’s lost it an eternity ago).

“A dog,” is said without hesitation, and if Sirius finds it odd he doesn’t show it. “Like one of those stories you read to me.”

A nod. Fingers on icy cheeks. “All right. Whatever you want, Remus, whatever you want.”

He brings him books, sometimes, Thin, coarse paper, coated with tiny black insect-letters that look soft and ragged at the same time under Remus’ careful fingertips, and Sirius watches in dismay as Remus stares, stares, stares at the books, changing page after page with his index moving along the straight lines until his fingers are smudged with inky remembrance and yet he doesn’t read it, doesn’t remember, isn’t the same person Sirius fell secretly in love with so many years ago.

He doesn’t bring the newspaper, as Peter’s still running loose, and the betrayal is the only memory he doesn’t want Remus to have back.

“Sometimes I want to eat you,” Remus says with his head tilted to the left, and Sirius’ breath disappears. “I remember I’ve always wanted too.”

“You could have. You didn’t. I didn’t. Won’t you come back from whenever you’re hidden and taste me?”

Remus laughs softly, alien on Sirius’ ears, and he swallows the cringe that rises like bile up to his mouth. Remus is sitting on the windowsill, the light making his hair look copper around the edges, an aura of loss, of yesterdays. Sirius sits next to him, close and yet so far away, and gazes sadly to the wide-eyed stranger by his side.

“You silly,” says the Remus-look alike, all cheerfulness and bright toothy smiles. “I’m right here!”

“No you’re not,” says Sirius after a while, as he twines his fingers into brown hair. “You’re gone, but, but…”

He kisses Remus, sudden and surprising even to himself, looking in the new taste a glimpse of something, anything, and Remus just “Oh”s against his lips and moves very, very softly with him. He parts, red bleeding on his cheeks and blinking too quickly, looking into Remus’ eyes and looking for a change.

Nothing, still, and he misses him so very much when he thinks what the real Remus would’ve done (“My Sirius, a bit late, isn’t it? No no, don’t you dare speak. Just fucking kiss me again.”).

“But you’ll come back.” he makes himself believe. “You better.”

Remus shrugs a bit, and kisses him again, the IV on his wrist getting caught on Sirius’ hair.